1/2/98
Chase and I went out tonight. I’m really glad we did because we talked for at least two hours about everything in life. I explained to him what has, to the best of my knowledge, made me who I am. And vice versa. It was a really nice talk, and I’m infinitely glad we had it. Now, if only I could convince myself that it was talking to him, and not just having someone to talk to, that I enjoyed so much. I honestly don’t know.
You know what I’m thinking about now? I’m thinking about Dante. And how he told me he loved me. I can picture the scene as if it were part of my favorite movie. I remember the way the words felt in my ear. I remember being shocked to all hell. I didn’t respond. At least not to him. He told Ami he thought I hadn’t heard him, but I did, and I reacted quite noticeably. He just didn’t see it. My eyes almost landed on the floor in front of me. I was so shocked I didn’t know what to do, shocked that he had said it, shocked that anyone could possibly think they were in love with me.
So, no, I didn’t exactly respond to Dante’s profession of love for me, but I definitely loved him. He definitely meant a lot to me, and he was suddenly taken from me. His life was drastically altered and completely shattered, with me powerless to do anything but watch. So if I was confused about how I felt then, or too stubborn to admit it to myself, what are the chances I’ll ever be able to admit to feeling something for anyone, especially now that I’ve seen how things can change no matter how much you don’t want them to? I’m not one to bare my soul and leave myself defenseless. I never was. So who knows how I feel about Chase? We just went out and had a nice talk.
1/18/98
The most unusual thing just happened. I was walking home from work with one of my coworkers, Dennis, and he started talking about a friend of his who plays the French horn. And I don’t know where it came from, but I suddenly said, “Hey! You know...” and just stopped because I realized what I was about to say. When he asked, I told him to forget it, but he persisted. So I said, “You know how I told you I had a friend that played the French horn?” He said, “Yeah...?” and I came out with, “She died.”
He just looked at me with wide eyes and said, “What do you mean?” And I said, “She dropped dead of heart failure, so now I don’t have any friends that play the French horn,” and I laughed, not because I thought anything was funny, but because I didn’t know of anything else to do. He said that was terrible and he was sorry for me, but then he didn’t say much else the whole way home.
I felt really weird having brought it up. I knew I would, which is why I hesitated the first time I opened my mouth. I feel guilty saying things like that, like I expect people to think I’m looking for sympathy and hate me for it, but I don’t want their sympathy. I don’t even know why I bring these things up. I just do. And I guess I somehow enjoy talking about it. But not really if someone else would’ve brought it up.
Maybe I am looking for sympathy. Maybe I want someone to realize that I’m so fucked in the head because I hate the world for letting people die young. Maybe I want someone to realize that I’m not as strong as I act. Maybe. I have no idea. I generally start the sentence thinking it’s a perfectly normal thing to say, and then I stop. No one else ever says things like that.
I haven’t heard from Chase in a few weeks. Sheridan dumped his girlfriend for me. I don’t care. About either of them. I’m sick of dealing. I’m feeling increasingly unfulfilled in everything. Life is undeniably empty. It has so little to offer me. Of course, what can it offer me if I don’t know what I need?
1/22/98
I didn’t have a necessarily hard day, but I was nonetheless drained when I got home from class. I tried to write a little, got frustrated, and decided to go to bed. Then I decided I was too upset to go to bed, so I got all ready for bed and sat down to watch some TV. Well, don’t you know, Camille was just downstairs so she told me not to lock her out. While she was out, Braedon showed up. I have not seen Braedon in at least a month, maybe two. I don’t know. All I know is that he knocked and I didn’t answer so he just let himself in. I almost freaked out. I told him to go away, but of course he didn’t. I was on the phone with Susan at the time. I didn’t want to see Braedon because I didn’t have my make-up on. I never see anyone without my make-up on. I can’t look at people if I don’t have my make-up on. I hate to be plain. I refuse to be plain. I didn’t want to see anyone. Braedon has such bad timing. It upset me a lot.
Susan thought I was being ridiculous. She said no one cares what I look like. To this I responded that I do. But truthfully, people do care. Chase tells me I look bad with my hair pulled back. Well, fuck him. Maybe I’m that insecure about my looks, but why wouldn’t I be? The world revolves around appearances. You can hate it, but it’s the truth. I almost feel like I won’t be able to face Braedon anymore, now that he’s seen me without my make-up on. I can’t believe I’m so addicted to make-up. It’s like a security blanket. It’s like I’m hiding the real me behind a mask. And if I’m not wearing it, I’m vulnerable and susceptible to people. I would do anything to keep people from knowing the real me. The only people who have seen me without make-up on in the last seven years have been the people I’ve lived with. Oh, and Chase saw me once too. Of course, Chase has seen me naked. But I’d rather be naked with my make-up on than clothed with it off.
1/29/98
As if I wasn’t already fairly certain, it occurred to me today that I am, in fact, decidedly masochistic.
Today for class, we had mock auditions. I didn’t need to learn an entirely new aria, but I did. In one week, it was learned, memorized, and ready to perform. I didn’t need to put off writing my resume until 11:00 the night before it was due, but I did. It would have been nice if I had made things easier on myself, but it wouldn’t have felt right. In order for anything to be even remotely satisfying, it has to hurt. It has to cause pain, or stress, or worry. I think it’s because I’m so used to it that anything else would just feel wrong and different. Different makes things more uncomfortable. If it’s uncomfortable, how can it be pleasant? For me to find pleasant, I have to go through the comfortable, reassuring pain that I’m so used to. Of course, on days like today, I don’t care and I just want to die.
I’m having serious doubts about becoming a singer. I don’t know what I want to sing. I’m clueless in general about my life. I feel like I’m not getting anywhere, and I never will.
2/3/98
It’s amazing how far I’ve come, how different things are than I ever would have expected. But when you think about it, I still want the same thing I’ve always wanted: freedom. I do what I want to do and I’m happy with that. I’m never going to be stuck in some stuffy little office somewhere, not going anywhere. You would think that would make me satisfied with life, but I’m still frustrated. I’m still confused. I can’t even imagine waking up in the morning and thinking, "I should get out of bed," instead of "Why the hell should I bother getting up?" I still feel like life has nothing to offer me. Or at least that life has nothing it’s willing to give to me.
When I was at work last night, my coworkers and I started talking about movies. We talked about Titanic and when the people are in bed at the end of the movie just waiting to drown. I pointed out that I thought drowning would be a horrible way to die. Then we started talking about how we want to die. I said it would be cool to die in a plane crash. Or I’d like to kill myself by slitting my wrists, OD-ing on drugs, jumping out a window or off a bridge, or shooting myself. Maybe sleeping in a running car locked in a garage. Maybe sleeping pills. I think the slitting the wrists would be best, though. It would be so gratifying to actually feel the punishment that is life slowly fading from my body. I also said it might be fun to watch someone shoot me. I think I’d enjoy hearing someone’s reasoning at the moment immediately preceding the second they shot me in the head. The only problem with that is a conversation I had several years ago with Mom. She said she’d never forgive someone if they killed one of her children. I told her I’d want her to forgive them, considering I’d be so much happier being dead than being alive. I don’t think she understood me. I don’t really remember my reasoning at the time, either. I think it had something to do with the fact that I assumed the driver of the car that hit Dante’s brother was somewhere out there in society just dying of guilt. I don’t think I believe that anymore. Anyone who can kill someone and just drive away obviously doesn’t care. Well, anyway, It was a fun conversation at work.
When I came home from work and laid down to go to sleep, I was so gloriously comfortable in my bed with my blankets and the cool temperature of the room. I got to wondering if I decided to actually kill myself by sleeping in a running car locked in the garage or by taking sleeping pills, if I would be able to fall asleep knowing I’d never wake up in the morning. I still don’t know. I started wondering about who would find me and what I’d look like through their eyes. Then I started thinking that I might rather be alive and find someone else who’d committed suicide. My heart started beating really fast and I thought I was not going to fall asleep. But before I knew it, I was awake in the morning. It actually turned out to be somewhat comforting thinking I was never going to wake up. I think it’s because that’s the only time when I don’t have to care about anything and I’m finally relaxed: when I know I’m going to die. And when I woke up, I felt surprisingly refreshed.
2/19/98
Last week in class, someone sang a Wolf song called Lass, o Welt or something like that. I didn’t get the name of the poet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s Heine. In any case, the speaker in the poem was saying to the world to leave him alone to wallow in his sorrow. He goes on to say that the only joy he finds in life is seen through a veil of tears. It’s one of those things that I wish I had written because it expresses the way I feel better than anything I could’ve written. That’s exactly how I feel: the only joy I find in life is seen through a veil of tears.
I was sitting on my bed this morning drinking my coffee when I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Something about my cheekbones seemed unusually defined, so I tried to recreate it by smiling at myself in the mirror. It didn’t define my cheekbones as I was hoping, all it did was shock me. I was absolutely shocked by the sight of myself smiling. So I smiled once more to see if that was actually the case, and it was. I immediately had to stop because not only was I surprised by the sight of myself smiling, but I was repulsed by the sight as well. When I smile, I may momentarily lose myself in the joy of a moment, but invariably I feel as though I’m being ridiculous to imagine that anything in life is good.
I got twelve hours of sleep last night and regardless of how much caffeine I have, I still feel like going back to sleep. School is getting increasingly tedious. I keep wondering why I bother.
4/10/98
I don’t usually think about the amount of dislike I have for specific days of the year. I pretty much hate them all. But now it strikes me that today could, in fact, be my least favorite day of the year. It’s Good Friday. When I think of Good Friday, two things come to mind.
I only remember them doing it once, but in church on one Good Friday many years ago, they had the entire congregation line up as if going to communion. The altar servers were holding crucifixes and instead of receiving communion, we were supposed to kiss the feet of Jesus on the cross. Of course I did it because I was young, but it was the most horrible experience. I was so uncomfortable with it, and I felt so pressured into it. Usually, those are not conditions that nurture healthy situations. I tried any possible way of getting out of church on Good Friday for the rest of the years I was living at home. So that’s one of the things I think of when Good Friday comes along.
Then, of course, there’s Dante’s brother. Good Friday was the day of the incident. I can no longer call it an accident because it’s so very likely that it was purposeful. If I remember correctly, the incident was Friday, but Corbin didn’t actually die until Saturday. When I think of Easter, I see the chocolate bunnies and the jelly beans they showed on the news in one of their typical media ploys to sensationalize and humanize the stories. Nevermind the people who want to hear anything except the story of the uneaten Easter candy that can never be enjoyed. Who the fuck cares about the damn Easter candy? I want to know when they’re going to catch the fucking hit and run driver. I want to know what they’re doing to try and find the driver. I want to know how quickly they’re going to execute the driver once they discover who it was. I want to see the driver’s face while they’re beating him to a bloody pulp. I want the driver dead. How am I supposed to be able to enjoy Easter? Am I supposed to believe in the resurrection of joy? The resurrection of hope? Am I supposed to shove aside all the things in life I know and accept to be true just so I can pretend to know something will eventually end all the death and destruction around me? I feel like I’m holding a mirror up to hell and living the reflection.
4/18/98
It’s Saturday, and I have the next three days off school. I had a perfectly good day, but I’m restless, and depressed, and angry. I’m lonely, but I don’t want to go anywhere, and I don’t want any company. I’m annoyed and uncomfortable, and I know that the only thing that helps is going to sleep, but I don’t feel like it.
You know, it’s the funniest thing--I hate people, and yet I hate to be alone. Well, I guess I really like people to be around, but I hate to get to know them, and I hate to hear what they’re saying or know what they’re thinking. I find that when I talk to someone these days, I completely zone out because I just don’t care. I’m quite good at making it look like I’m paying attention, though. I can tell by the inflection in their voice when and how I’m supposed to respond, but I can still have no clue what they’re talking about. I also find that no one is particularly interested in what I have to say. I’ll be halfway through a sentence and just stop, and no one will even notice. I don’t expect people to care that I’m talking or what I’m talking about, but it might be nice if they did.
I’m also recently coming to terms with the fact that I must be asexual. Whenever I see a guy that I find attractive, I may want to talk to him and occasionally I get the impulse to want to kiss him, but it’s never sexual in any way. Kissing is cool for about thirty seconds, and then it gets boring. And then I’m done. I hate when people talk about sex. I hate when people ask me about sex. I hate when people look at me lustfully. I hate to see people kissing. I hate to see people touching. I hate to see people smiling at each other. I notice just as many attractive girls as attractive guys. And that’s just because they’re nice to look at, like anything else is nice to look at. I have about as much of an impulse to touch another human being as I have to touch a cactus or a burning flame. I am so not interested in ever having a relationship of any sort. And as comfortable as I am with this because it is who I am, still I have to wonder what’s wrong with me. Normal is boring, and I will agree to that to the day I die, but I will never have a normal life. I will never have the life that as a kid I was sure I’d have. Every kid thinks they’ll grow up and have a family and be happy. I don’t want a husband, and I hate kids. All I’ll have is myself and my insecure career that could change at any given moment. And as much as I believe that singing will make me happy, happiness seems a long way off.
8/9/98
I just finished reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula yesterday, so today I rented the movie that was based on the novel. Of course, I was disappointed with the movie. It was horribly romanticizing what Bram Stoker meant to be horrifying. You just have to hate how things get twisted around. If they were going to stray so much from the book, they might as well have just written an original screenplay. In any case, I’ve had Dracula on my mind recently, so I thought I’d mention it. What a cool book: lots of blood. I wonder if Bram Stoker had a thing for drinking blood?
10/9/98
I woke up today in a horrible mood. It was raining and I didn’t want to go out. And I didn’t want to go out because it was raining. But I decided if I was going to go out and take some drugs, I might as well be in a bad mood. I went to a friend’s place and we ate dinner and got ready and then we left. It turns out we got some E, so I took it right away and had to wait about forty-five minutes for it to kick in. After I took it, I kept trying to forget about it so I’d be surprised when it kicked in, but it was impossible to forget. I was in such anticipation of my first experience with serious drugs that I was cold and nervous. When it finally did kick in, I was dancing. All of a sudden, I didn’t care about how I was dancing or who was watching me. I remember thinking that it felt like the music was telling me how to move. And it just felt so good to move. We danced a few songs and then my friend said she was really warm and I knew I should be too, but my body couldn’t register that I was tired from dancing. Then we walked through the other rooms and it was so cool because I felt like my head was a video camera on wheels, just taking pictures of everything around me. Lights were particularly cool-looking. And a picture of a skeleton on the wall. Depth perception was a little weird. I’d be twenty feet away from a wall and feel like I could touch it. Or the ceiling would look lower than people’s heads. That stuff was the best part.
Later, I tried looking at my watch to see how long it had been since I had taken it. It was too dark and I couldn’t see the face or the hands on the watch, so I took this to mean that time didn’t matter. From then on, every time I wondered what time it was, my hand would feel heavy and I would know it was because I shouldn’t look at it since time didn’t matter. Of course.
After all this stuff, which probably only lasted about an hour, I just got really interested in watching things. Everything was so interesting. There was absolutely no past or future--just the present--so all there was to do was take in the surroundings. It was amazing the things I noticed. All the little things were most prominent. I could see people’s faces better when they were further away. After I took in what I could, I felt complete nothingness. Still the lack of time, but no thoughts of any sort. I’d recognize things and just not care. It was the most amazing sense of freedom being able to look at things as what they are instead of what I’ve learned to think about them. If I could feel like that all the time, I might be able to tolerate life.
10/20/98
The thought of having to go on living until I die makes me cringe. The thought of being obligated to plan for my future makes me sick. Life is entirely too interesting to waste it on plans. It’s the spontaneity, the utter absurdity of life that makes it even remotely interesting. I could spend my life sitting on a bench watching people walk by--provided, of course, that I had an inexhaustible supply of coffee with me. But I can’t spend my life watching other people. That’s what I hate about life; I have to do something at all times to make myself a better person, to try and accomplish something with my time among the living even though I know it’s useless.
Why does everyone bother? I mean, I would like to make a career for myself, but it’s only because I’m supposed to. It’s only because that’s the only way to ensure that I won’t be out on the streets. I must be missing whatever it is that makes people feel their lives are worth fussing over. I find myself respecting the alcoholics and the drug addicts these days. Good for them for doing whatever the hell they want. Good for them for escaping from their own personal hell.
I’m finding myself spending a dangerous amount of time living in my head. I think what is going on in my head and what I allow people to think is going on in my head are two completely and vastly different things. It’s like I’m Richard Cory, wandering around pretending that everything’s fine. People can watch me and wonder about me and think I’m perfectly happy, while in reality I’m a lighted fuse just waiting to explode. I’m a different person in my head and no one will ever know. And I’ll never know anyone else in that way, so relationships with people are pointless. Life sucks and I want to die and all I like is pain and who the fuck cares anyway.
10/24/98
I feel like I’m being punished for some horribly offensive crime I didn’t commit. I feel like writing in my journal is like writing a book on the events leading to my demise. I feel like the troubled main character who is being pulled in a thousand different directions by all the things that torment me. I feel the book getting closer and closer to its end.
Last night when I cut my leg, I could see the skin pulling away from the muscle and whatever is underneath--probably fat, because it was white. I just got a shower and the wound reopened and started bleeding again. Usually, I wake up in the morning and it’s already starting to scab from the dried blood. I could stare at my leg for hours. I’m aware of the fact that I should probably get help. But I have other things to worry about.
10/28/98
I am not afraid of death. On the contrary, I welcome death. I long for death. My life is nothing but a precursor to death. I want the silence of death. I want to be heard by death. I wait in trembling impatience for the companionship of death. I want to lose myself to the tingling touch of death's caresses. I want the simplicity, the energizing nothingness of death.
I am not afraid of suicide. On the contrary, I welcome suicide. I long for death. My life is nothing but a precursor to death. I want to allow myself the satisfaction of suicide. I want to feel the ecstatic pain of suicide. I want to engage my blood with the eager touch of a razor's edge, mating the harmonious duo in a private love-making ritual. I want to feel the raw fluid pulsating from my veins, draining the torture of reality from my mind. I want the peacefulness of a body stripped of life.
But I am afraid if I die, you will have to live with my reality. You will know my thoughts. You will be confined to the heightened sensation of the reality I know. You will hate life with such painful intensity that it is the only thing you could kill without remorse. You will know what it is like to be petrified of opening your eyes to meet others' eyes because their blissful ignorance makes you seethe with hate. You will feel the loneliness of excommunication, the slavery of exile to a land that lives around you while you cannot participate. You will see as you walk down the street, the people around you falling in the path of cars on the highway, through a shattered window, off an impossibly high bridge, carnage everywhere, everyone dying, and for you it will be just another day experiencing the reality that I know now.
So I am not afraid of death. I am not afraid of suicide. But I cannot welcome death for your sake. I cannot release you into the terrifying reality, suddenly introducing a nightmare to the innocence of your dream-world, like a defenseless child to a pack of starving wolves at the edge of a dark forest, to shark-infested waters at the bottom of a boundless ravine, hallucinating with fear and crying for help into the indifferent atmosphere of absolute solitude, desperate and alone. On the contrary, I must remain living in my murderous reality, my inferno of vitality, my life, my precursor to death.
I want to kill myself. The only thing keeping me going is Speranza. I don't want my little sister to have to go through what I am going through.
11/20/98
Absolutely no words can describe what I felt tonight. I went out for dinner and drinks with Braedon. He of course brought some E. After dinner, we took our friendly pills and then, of all places to go when you’re rolling on E, we went to an a capella concert. At first, I was kind of bored and feeling awkward because everyone there seemed really conservative to me. I decided that I wasn't having a very good time. Until the drugs kicked in.
Suddenly, the concert was absolutely amazing. The music was so energetic, and my body felt like it was having little tiny orgasms all over. I couldn't see very well, and I couldn't contain my excitement. I was awestruck and rolling on E, surrounded by conservative college students. Braedon and I stuck out like sore thumbs in that place. All I wanted to do was tell everyone how good I felt, and why, and how much the music overwhelmed me. I swear to you, I could not only hear the music, but I could also taste it and smell it. As a singer, I have to say the experience added several dimensions to my understanding of the power of music. I wanted to tell the whole world. Luckily, I somehow managed to stay seated and quiet.
It was other-worldly. It was surreal adrenaline-pumping excitement. I didn't know or care who I was or where I was, and I couldn't even tell that the people were singing in English. The music wasn't a humanly produced noise, it was energy swirling in the air and making my brain dance. It was energy, and I was energy, and all I could breathe was more energy. And then suddenly, it fizzled out and was almost gone. It was the strangest thing. It was like the singers were surrounded by a white haze like in dreams on TV, and then as the person is awakened, the haze scatters and drops the person back into wakefulness. It fizzled out. That's the only way I can describe it. I could literally see the haze melting, and I could feel the brain cells exploding in my head. I've never been so happy in my life. Everyone should feel like that all the time.
11/21/98
I love having foreign substances in my body. What’s interesting here is that as usual I can see both sides to the situation. I can understand that doing drugs or being an alcoholic is bad. I understand that it can screw up people’s lives or even kill them. The difference in my mind, and the reason why this all doesn’t make any difference to me, is that I don’t care about life. In fact, I hate life. And we all know this already, so it’s no big surprise. I’m just becoming increasingly frustrated with people who can’t understand. If someone says drugs are bad, I just can’t deal. I’m personally offended and I think they don’t know what they’re talking about. And I think they’re very closed-minded to condemn something without ever having tried it. I hate them for wanting to talk people out of doing something that would show those people the most incredible happiness they’ve ever known.
Maybe it’s sad, but the drugs are what give me the most satisfaction these days. I realize that a lot of people won’t understand that; they’ll say I should see a shrink or something and maybe that’s the case, but it isn’t my fault that my brain works the way it does. Maybe it would be nice to be able to live a normal life and ‘say no to drugs’ and stay away from alcohol and become someone. But more likely than not, life would just screw me over anyway. I don’t know where most of the things I think come from, but the thoughts are there. I like drugs. I like alcohol. I like cutting myself open with a knife just to see the blood. I like the taste of blood. I like the smell of blood. And nothing excites me more than genuine physical pain. That’s not weird, that’s just me. In the mindset of the way I was brought up, yes it’s weird. But I have friends that are the same way, so I’m certainly not a one-in-a-million sort of case. I can understand why people murder. I can even understand how it could be fun. And I’m finding myself surrounded by all sorts of people that think I’m wrong. It kind of sucks.